Soul – first-look review | Little White Lies

Festivals

Soul – first-look review

11 Oct 2020

Words by Hannah Strong

A man in glasses plays a piano in a dimly lit room with colourful lights.
A man in glasses plays a piano in a dimly lit room with colourful lights.
Jamie Foxx is a jazz musi­cian reck­on­ing with the after­life in Pixar’s best film in quite some time.

It used to be that audi­ences had to wait a few years between Pixar films, as each one took a long time to pro­duce, and as such, the results were always high­ly antic­i­pat­ed by adults and chil­dren alike. Now, as Pixar – along­side Stu­dio Ghi­b­li – are per­haps the most famous ani­ma­tion stu­dio on the plan­et, the wait between their films has become much short­er, thanks to Disney’s involve­ment and tech­no­log­i­cal advancement.

But late­ly it’s felt a lit­tle like those clever folks in Emeryville were phon­ing it in. Their last release (Onward, approx­i­mate­ly 20 years ago, in March of this year) was an under­whelm­ing elven adven­ture star­ring Chris Pratt and Tom Hol­land, and pri­or to that came two sequels in the form of Toy Sto­ry 4 and Incred­i­bles 2, which didn’t quite live up to the mag­ic of their pre­de­ces­sors. It’s some­thing of a relief, then, that their lat­est orig­i­nal sto­ry is their best work since 2015’s Inside Out.

Joe Gard­ner (Jamie Foxx) is a mid­dle-aged mid­dle-school band teacher in New York City, who’s been beat­en down by life repeat­ed­ly despite his tal­ent and pas­sion for jazz music. When he’s final­ly offered a gig with leg­endary sax­o­phon­ist Dorothea Williams (Angela Bas­sett) he won’t let any­thing stand in his way – not even death.

After an unfor­tu­nate acci­dent with an open man­hole cov­er, he’s trans­port­ed to The Great Before, where souls are assigned per­son­al­i­ties before being sent to earth to become peo­ple. In his attempts to get back to earth and his chance at star­dom, he’s part­nered with 22 (Tina Fey) an apa­thet­ic soul who doesn’t want to become human.

If Coco dealt with The Great Beyond and let­ting go, Soul is about grab­bing what you’ve got with both hands and cel­e­brat­ing the joy of being alive. Whether it’s play­ing the piano, eat­ing a slice of pep­per­oni piz­za or just watch­ing the wind blow through the trees, there’s so much admi­ra­tion for the very act of being in the film – which per­haps hits even hard­er giv­en the uncer­tain­ty which occu­pies every wak­ing minute of our present day.

Despite the whacky body-swap plot involv­ing a chub­by cat called Mr Mit­tens, Soul also feels more con­scious­ly geared towards an old­er audi­ence, which makes sense con­sid­er­ing most of the chil­dren who grew up with Pixar’s ear­li­est films are now in their thir­ties and for­ties. It’s dif­fi­cult to say how much mileage chil­dren will get out of the sto­ry­line, but the cute crit­ters and shim­mery teal design of the Great Before are child-friend­ly enough to not make death seem com­plete­ly harrowing.

New York has nev­er looked as pret­ty as it does in the Pixar uni­verse, and the score – com­posed by Trent Reznor and Atti­cus Ross with jazz arrange­ments by Jon Batiste – is a thing of beau­ty, com­bin­ing the ethe­re­al with the exper­i­men­tal with enough enthu­si­asm to con­vert even the jazz-sceptics.

Here’s hop­ing that Pixar’s invest­ment in new sto­ry­telling tal­ent con­tin­ues; bring­ing in the supreme­ly tal­ent­ed play­wright Kemp Pow­ers as co-direc­tor and co-writer has result­ed in a sto­ry that feels fresh and fun­ny while retain­ing the Pixar spark. And as all their best films have a fun­da­men­tal­ly valu­able mes­sage, so does this one.

For every­one who’s ever felt they weren’t good enough, Soul sug­gests a move towards accept­ing that life isn’t some­thing you can fig­ure out on the first try.

You might like

Accessibility Settings

Text

Applies the Open Dyslexic font, designed to improve readability for individuals with dyslexia.

Applies a more readable font throughout the website, improving readability.

Underlines links throughout the website, making them easier to distinguish.

Adjusts the font size for improved readability.

Visuals

Reduces animations and disables autoplaying videos across the website, reducing distractions and improving focus.

Reduces the colour saturation throughout the website to create a more soothing visual experience.

Increases the contrast of elements on the website, making text and interface elements easier to distinguish.